Being Seized By Iraqis Fright For Cbs Reporter

May 31, 1992|By CHRISTOPHER REYNOLDS Book Reviewer

I have to confess that I looked forward to disliking this book. Western TV journalist strays over invisible ``line in the sand,'' gets grabbed by Iraqi patrol, misses big story. Big story is pulverizing of Iraqi army by galactically superior forces covered by squadrons of Western news media. Big deal. Takes a lot to make me cry. Make mental note to skip self-congratulatory press dinner where Bob Simon receives an overblown award from overpaid ``profession.''

And yet, and yet. There was a time when Simon himself rather imagined something like the above-mentioned dinner (with the adjectives left out). And then it began to dawn on him that this was an extremely serious pickle he was in. He looked back on his fearlessness during previous engagements, so to speak: ``My threadbare safari jacket was my cloak, the protective armor of the chronicler; the Olivetti was my shield; the press card, my badge of invulnerability.''

As chief correspondent for CBS in the Mideast, Simon had had ample, leisurely chance to see and record all kinds of suffering. He is ironic at his own expense when he sets down what it felt like to be hungry and frightened and imprisoned himself. At one point he curses himself for working out like a good American to get in shape for the Gulf War. ``I had finally managed to lose that middle-aged spread; finally, when I needed it most.''

Sitting in a cell fantasizing about the next bowl of soup, he thinks back a decade to covering the hunger strike of the I.R.A. militant Bobby Sands, who went for weeks with nothing but water before he died. All this is good for his sense of proportion, and for ours, too.

Simon tells of both the humanity and the inhumanity he encountered among the Iraqi guards and soldiers. His apprehension - that he would have a harder time because he was Jewish and based in Israel - was on the whole unfounded. The Iraqi regime is vile and brutal to everybody, regardless of race, color or creed.